This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Motorized vehicles traditionally include a power supply (e.g. an internal combustion engine, an electric motor and/or a combination thereof) that produces a drive torque. A transmission receives the drive torque and employs various gear ratios to modify the input torque to obtain various desired output torques. The output torque is then transmitted through a driveshaft to a differential unit, which evenly distributes the torque between a pair of axle shafts. The axle shafts, in turn, cause movement of the vehicle wheels.
The torque measurement may be obtained through use of a torque sensor, such as a strain gage or a surface acoustic wave device (SAW), which can monitor shaft torque while the driveshaft is in a rotating or dynamic state. This information is then relayed to other vehicle systems and to the operator for further analysis and action. Such sensors are relatively expensive and, as such, it is common to employ various techniques to approximate the magnitude of the torque transmitted through the driveshaft rather than to directly measure the magnitude of the torque.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a driveshaft assembly with a torque sensor that was more economical in cost.